DANNY SHEEHAN and SARA NELSON start us off in Solartopia with CIA drug-dealing in Central America. We focus on the new movie AMERICAN MADE with TOM CRUISE and its astounding depiction of BARRY SEAL, the dare-devil pilot who illegally flew guns to the fascist Contras while returning with large shipments of cocaine. The whole Iran-Contra adventure reminds us that the …

Anticipating the worst under the incoming administration, a group of scientists are frantically trying to archive government climate data before President-elect Donald Trump’s “band of climate conspiracy theorists…storm the castle,” as one put it. On Saturday, Slate meterologist Eric Holthaus posed the question: “Scientists: Do you have a US.gov climate database that you don’t want to see disappear? Add it …

Bad things happen when the Pentagon tries to run itself like a business. ifty-four years ago, the brand-new Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara thought he could bring Pentagon spending on everyday items under control by applying efficiencies he had used to help turn around Ford Motor Co. Instead, he created a monster. McNamara’s creation, known as the Defense Logistics …

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has once again championed the incredible potential of renewable energy. During an interview Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco, the 44-year-old CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX said that the U.S. could meet its electricity needs just by covering a small corner of Utah or Nevada with solar panels. His remark was captured in …